US expands military net over Africa, checking China’s influence

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is a regular contributor to RT, Counterpunch, New Eastern Outlook, Press TV, and many other news outlets. Visit StopImperialism.com for all his work.

Over the last decade, America has quietly expanded its military presence throughout Africa in an attempt to counter Chinese and other emerging nations’ influence, while consolidating control over critical strategic resources and trade routes.

The United States, like its allies Britain and France, has long
maintained influence and indirect control in Africa through
financial institutions such as the World Bank, International
Monetary Fund, and African Development Bank. It has exerted
political influence using aid organizations such as USAID and
NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and
others.

However, recent years have seen an unprecedented military
expansion which has gone almost entirely unnoticed by the US
public.

After 9/11, the United States began to grow its military
footprint on the African continent under the guise of a ‘War on
Terror’, selling this notion to a United States gripped with fear
of terrorism. With programs such as the Pan-Sahel Initiative,
later broadened into the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism
Initiative, Washington managed to provide military and financial
assistance to compliant countries in North Africa – a policy
whose practical application meant that the US military became the
dominant force in the Sahel region, supplying the human and
material resources for which the governments of the region were
starved. Naturally, this meant an implicit subservience to US
military command.

The Pan-Sahel Initiative, according to the Office of Counterterrorism, US Department of
State, was "a State-led effort to assist Mali, Niger, Chad, and
Mauritania in detecting and responding to suspicious movement
of people and goods across and within their borders through
training, equipment and cooperation. Its goals support two US
national security interests in Africa: waging the war on
terrorism and enhancing regional peace and security." In 2005
it was replaced by a larger-scope Trans-Saharan
Counterterrorism Initiative, which in turn was incorporated
into the United States Africa Command in 2008.

However, all the initiatives in the post 9/11 period were still
under the authority of a variety of military commands. To remedy
this, in 2007 the Bush administration created US Africa Command
(AFRICOM) to act as the umbrella organization under which all US
military activity in Africa would fall. AFRICOM became an
officially independent command a year later, and in the seven
years its scope of activity has broadened tremendously, with its
direct or indirect presence extending into nearly every country
on the continent.

Far from initial AFRICOM agenda

AFRICOM’s mission statement reads like a
campaign slogan, stating that “[AFRICOM] advances US national
interests and promote[s] regional security, stability, and
prosperity.” However, a more critical analysis would
question exactly how Washington defines “security, stability,
and prosperity,” and perhaps most importantly, whose
prosperity they’re principally interested in.

Ostensibly, the US military acts to defend ‘democracies’
in Africa for the collective betterment of the people of the
continent. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa
Whelan stated in 2007, “AFRICOM is about helping Africans
build greater capacity to assure their own security.”

However, even the words of AFRICOM’s leadership quickly dispel
that mythology. Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, military deputy to
former commander of AFRICOM General William ‘Kip’ Ward, told an
AFRICOM conference in 2008 that AFRICOM’s goal was
“protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to
the global market.” Furthermore, Moeller wrote in 2010, “Let there be no mistake.
AFRICOM’s job is to protect American lives and promote American
interests.”

The military leadership made their agenda quite clear from the
very outset of AFRICOM: provide a military presence to ensure the
continued exploitation of Africa for the enrichment of finance
capital, and the maintenance and expansion of US hegemony on the
continent.

Perhaps the most obvious example of AFRICOM’s mission on the
continent was its coordination of the US role in the NATO war on
Libya. Directing the war from its secretive base, known as Camp
Lemonnier, in Djibouti, AFRICOM played a key role in identifying
targets, organizing forces, and providing tactical intelligence.

Far from ‘providing stability’, the US military eliminated a
peaceful government that refused to submit to the dictates of
Washington, London and Paris. Gaddafi’s government committed the
grave sin of nationalizing oil resources and sharing the profits
with its people, providing clean drinking water and adequate
housing, engaging in large-scale infrastructure projects such as
the Great Man-Made River, providing jobs and legal protections to
migrant workers from neighboring countries, and serving as a
model of economic development outside the hegemony of the Western
powers.

For these and many other reasons, the US and its allies mobilized
their militaries and destroyed Libya, leaving it to become the
chaotic and failed state that it is today.

A direct consequence of the neocolonial war on Libya was the
further destabilization of the Sahel region, and the nation of
Mali specifically. Although Western media has attempted to
downplay the US role in the Mali conflict, facts have emerged
demonstrating a very clear US role in the destabilization of the
country. As the Tuareg fighters who bravely fought to defend
Gaddafi and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya returned to Mali, they
rekindled their decades-long struggle for self-determination and
the establishment of their own independent state of Azawad.

In the midst of this conflict however, the Malian government of
President Toure was overthrown by a midlevel military commander
named Amadou Sanogo. Far from acting alone, reports emerged
confirming that he was, in fact, trained by US military.
Moreover, the Washington Post also reported that US military
personnel were inside of Mali long before the coup took place,
suggesting at the very least support for, if not direct control
of, Sanogo and his fellow plotters. Of course, under the auspices
of fighting Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a North African
terror organization, the French and their NATO allies engaged in
a yet another neo-colonial war, occupying Mali and, again,
‘promoting stability’.

AFRICOM also took command of US military involvement in Somalia
and the Horn of Africa more broadly in 2008. The United States
backed the invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in late 2006, with the
CIA funneling money and weapons to Washington’s favorite warlords
in a successful attempt to prevent the Council of Islamic Courts
from constituting a government in the war-ravaged country. In so
doing, the US prolonged the war and helped promote the growth of
the Al-Shabaab terror organization.

More recently, AFRICOM has transformed its mission on the
continent. Rather than ‘supporting national governments’, it has
become a leader and initiator of military activity. In 2013
alone, AFRICOM conducted joint exercises with fourteen African
nations, leading land, sea, and air-based operations.

Additionally, Mother Jones magazine developed an important
graphic illustrating the pervasive military footprint throughout
the continent, one that is only growing. It would seem then that
AFRICOM’s initial ‘mission statement’ is but a distant memory.

‘Proxy war theater’

It is no secret that the last decade has seen an unprecedented
expansion of Chinese investment throughout Africa. As renowned
Professor and China scholar Deborah Brautigam noted in her 2013
report‘Chinese Investment in
Africa’,“Chinese
imports and exports, outbound investment aid, and export finance
are all sharply on the rise. For example, trade between China and
Africa rose from $10 billion in 2000 to $166.3 billion in 2011…
[In 2012] Chinese leaders announced a goal of $20 billion in
finance to African countries by 2015. If carried out, an average
of between $6 and $7 billion would flow to Africa per year.”

Brautigam’s numbers illustrate the fact that, while still
slightly below yearly US total investment in the continent ($9
billion), China is rapidly challenging US economic hegemony in
Africa. Having invested in a variety of sectors from mining and
oil, to telecommunications and banking, China has made itself
into a viable alternative to US, World Bank, and IMF investment
and aid. Naturally, this has upset the political and corporate
establishment in the US who see in China a threat to their power.

Washington’s Africa policy in recent years must be understood
within the context of checking China’s growing power and
influence. One prime example is the US-sponsored break up of
Sudan and the creation of South Sudan.

In order to power its massive industrial sector and population,
China has become the world’s leading energy importer, with
lucrative contracts all over the world. However, Beijing’s
primary oil source in Africa was Sudan, which accounted for 8
percent of China’s total oil imports (China being the recipient
of a whopping 78% of total Sudanese exports).

With the oilfields being located primarily in the south of the
country, the US led the charge to dismantle Sudan and create a
South Sudan that would be dependent on US finance and military
muscle (provided by AFRICOM and US clients such as Uganda and
Rwanda) for its very survival. The continuing violence and
bloodshed in South Sudan – a result of internal power struggles
between competing US aligned factions – is merely collateral
damage in Washington’s growing proxy war with China.

China is also a major trading partner of its longtime ally
Zimbabwe. Having invested in a variety of industries including
mining, tobacco, and infrastructure, Beijing has a great interest
in maintaining stability in Zimbabwe. Conversely, the United
States has attempted to destabilize the country throughout the
last decade, going so far as to impose crippling sanctions and
attempt regime change using proxies inside Zimbabwe.

All over Africa, the United States has tried to check the growing
influence of China. From Nigeria to South Africa, Angola to
Sudan, the US is engaging in a widespread proxy war with the
expressed intention of maintaining its dominant position in
Africa. Using its vast military resources, Washington seeks to
cement its African hegemony using the same colonial tactics as
every other empire that came before it.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.